I am grateful to my reader Chrys for giving me the following idea.
The EU, the Eurozone in particular, is like a marriage. It started off as a marriage of convenience, went through various phases mostly good until problems struck and has now turned very sour. The spouses have started hating and blaming each other.
There is a further feature to this marriage. Hubbie is the bread winner and has the money and the clout. As things have soured so has he become more intransigent, more opinionated and more bossy. He always wins the argument with: “It’s my money! I’m the one paying for everything in this household so just you shut up and do as I tell you!” Because, of course, “I know best!” So there. And the only reason he knows best is because he is the one with the money.
In the late J.K. Galbraith’s excellent little book “The Great Crash 1929”, he tells us how, in the run up to this crash, bankers and other “very serious people” to quote Paul Krugman, would declare all was going well, things would continue on the up and up and all sorts of crazy and deceitful reassurances. However, these people were believed. Completely and utterly. Why? Because, Galbraith tells us, when someone has a great deal of money (like the banker Mellon as he mentions) everyone automatically assumes that they are infinitely wise.
Now back to our sour and unpleasant marriage. Things have got so bad that hubbie often resort to violence. He slaps his poor wife around, throws her out into the cold to punish her and show her what it will be like if she dares leave him, cuts down on housekeeping money making her eat left overs while he’s enjoying a steak and things like that.
It’s getting to the point where life is not really worth living any more for the wife. She can’t stand him, he’s overbearing, he’s cruel, but above all he is so pompous and self righteous and keeps blaming everything on her. She was profligate, she squandered his money, she couldn’t manage the household accounts, she over charged his credit cards and so on.
She’s had enough, she wants to leave him but she doesn’t have the resources. What does she do? If she has the guts she’ll just walk out of the house, slam the door in his face and go out and find a job any job till she manages to get back on her own two feet again.
Now if this were a film, the closing sequence would be ten years down the line, when she has flourished and is independent and in charge of her own life again while he has withered, looks old and much sadder because, the cause of his worries was not his wife as he had convinced them both, but his own arrogance and dependence on his money for power. He may even have lost all his wealth on the stock exchange or something.
The other outcome of this story is that the wife caves in. She is afraid to face the world on her own. He has already thrown her out into the snow and left her to go hungry several times and she doesn’t have the guts to go out there and face it and fight for a better future. So she bows her head and accepts his terms. You will have no freedom to do anything unless I tell you. You will only eat enough to keep you alive. Oh, and you don’t need any heating in winter either!
Despite the ostensible “reconciliation” we all know that this will not end well. The closing sequence for this film script will either be her stabbing him to death in the night with the kitchen knife or else her jumping to suicide on the train tracks. Either way it won’t be nice.
So what will Europe do? Stay with sadistic, overbearing, arrogant hubbie who always knows best, on his terms and end up suicidal or murderous, or divorce?
I’m sorry about the cliff hanger, but we don’t know yet. Though I’m afraid in our heart of hearts we do know what the temporary outcome will be.
[What’s that I hear? A scraping sound in the dead of night? Is someone sharpening the kitchen knives?]